Snow My Goodness!

For the first time in... I can't remember how long, San Angelo got a SNOW DAY!!! I watched the news from 5:30 on, waiting for them to say something, and then, at 6:15, there it was. No classes for SAISD today. I had to rewind the tv to play it back. And then jump up and down and scream silently, because Tater and Randy were still sleeping. But snow it did, and much fun was had.

Love that West Texas snow...

We spent lots of time running around, making snow angels, throwing snowballs, playing Freeze Tag (how appropriate), putting Tater's mittens back on for the 50th time, and then he decided to eat some snow. This was his method of choice; laying on his tummy in the driveway and sticking his face in the snow to eat it like a little puppy. Goober child...

Mama's snow angel

Mama's other snow angel

Our awesome snowman: We planned to make a bigger one later, but it melted too fast.

The fort became a snow fort.

The snowballs, they were a-flyin'

Tater's little mitten-prints in the snow on the slide

Short lived, but we'll take it any way we can get it. This morning, about 10:

And this afternoon at 4:30

All in all, a great day. We played a Wii tournament, lots of playdoh and games. We consumed way too much hot chocolate. I cleaned nothing. Tomorrow - life as usual, but today? Today was a memory I will treasure.

Family Portraits

Courtesy of my uber-talented friend Jenny with Sprinkle of Grace. Do I have a gorgeous little boy or what?!?

Future Blackmail

I really love this 3-year-old stage that Tater is in. The stage in which he does hilarious things and still lets me get them on camera. There are other 3-year-old stages I could live without, but that's a different story...
So I just can't help but share.

OK, so that one's not really that bad, but it was his first day of "school" and I had to throw it in. Can't resist a cheesy grin.

Captain Underpants himself.

Captain Underpants taking a lunch break. He wore that goofy hat for at least an hour.

And my personal favorite...

Mr. Singin' in the Rain. And in a visor and jacket. Do you notice a trend here? My kid doesn't wear pants much.

30 is the new 20

Yep, that's right. I am 30 now. Officially in my 30's. And in honor of my big milestone day, my wonderful family, headed up by my mommy and seester Dana threw me a wonderful surprise birthday party the Saturday before my birthday. I, of course, was clueless as usual; it really was a surprise.

The plan was to have dinner at Mom's with the in-town siblings. We all went over a little earlier than planned so the boys could play a little longer before the cousins went to a baseball game (my fault - yes, I nearly messed up the surprise) and then started getting ready for dinner. Then the doorbell rang and I saw 4 of my sweet friends standing there. And of course, then I realized what was going on... realized why Mom hesitated when I asked if we could come over early; why the projector was out in the dining room (Mom made this fabulous slide show of my life; beyond sweet); why everybody was acting just a little weird. :)

So we all enjoyed some good food, some INCREDIBLE chocolate cake, and some hilarious pics of this ridiculous 30-year-old growing up. Oh, and the boys played. And played and played.

Mom asked everybody to make a "top 30" list for my for my big day; it was the coolest thing ever. Kerry made a list of scripture promises; Dana made a list of quotable quotes; Sara made a too-great-for words list of "Fri memories" shared between the two of us; Crystal made a very cute anagram with my name that actually had 30 words; Christyn sent a list of 30 pieces of advice; my sweet Sabi, Sara and Alison gave me 30 Dove chocolates (woo hoo!) and a facial. There were a few other lists of memories and messages too; and Mom gave me a gorgeous scrapbook to keep them all in. I just felt so very loved. My favorite list, though, was from my dad and step-mom. Even though they couldn't be there, Carla made a ton of great food, and Daddy made a just plain awesome "list." He picked out 30 symbols that represented things he loved about me and different memories we shared. Like a package of "Maw Maw cookies," like my grandmother always gave us, or a paint set to represent my creativity. It was so very touching and so very sweet. I managed to keep from crying all evening until I opened his bag... luckily most everyone was gone already.

It was a wonderful night. I just feel so blessed to have such wonderful people around me. I know a lot of time and effort went into my night, and I can't tell everyone how much I appreciated their thoughtfulness! Even to those who wanted to be there but couldn't; I love you and I thank you so much for thinking of me and for loving me.

So, all in all - turning 30 wasn't so bad. Oh, and by the way - my whole "30 by 30" isn't quite done yet. I didn't manage to get all the way to 30 yet, but I will... and then some. The joy of doing for someone else is just too good a feeling to give up just because I had a birthday.

A precious moment...

We've been keeping an eye on the weather tonight, and I just told Tater that it looked like the storm wasn't coming after all. his emphatic reply was, "Jesus stopped the storm!" I smiled. "He sure did, baby. God can do that, huh?" Very quickly, he said, "Let's pray to God, come on."
So we folded our hands, closed our eyes, and this is what my precious boy prayed.

Dear God,
Thank you for stopping the storm.
Thank you for taking a bath.
Thank you for Nico, and
Thank you for putting me together.
Aaaaaamen.

Date-Day with Tater

Today is my last official day of summer; tomorrow I go back to school for staff development days, and even though I have a four-day weekend, I have a feeling a big chunk of that will be spent on school stuff. So today, I refused to even think about school (previous sentence excluded) and decided it would be Tater's day. He planned the agenda and we shared a fabulous morning together. A morning that plumb wore him out, hence giving me the time to post documentation this afternoon. :)

We started the morning at the river; we went to Kid's Kingdom yesterday and saw some newly hatched baby ducks (when Mommy did not have her camera), so of course we had to come back to check on them. Sadly, they were all gone. We're hoping they made their way down to the river, and were not eaten by hawks, like the nice man we met yesterday told us all about happening to the last group of baby ducks he watched hatch (thanks, dude).

Here's a rare Tater/Mommy pic, taken by a not-very-skilled-in-self-portraits Mommy.

We arrived around 8:15 and had the park to ourselves for quite awhile, which was really neat. I played and climbed on just about everything Tater did (except the slides - there I draw the line), so I'm counting that as my workout for today.

He went up.

He came down.

He swung for the briefest of moments... I'll never understand how a kid as fearless as he is doesn't like to swing.

Then we decided it was time to feed ducks. There is a little pond right across the street from the park, so we walked over to say hi. We took our deliciously stale bread and made some friends very quickly. Those ducks are surprisingly well-conditioned to that Mrs. Baird's bag. In the same little pond lives a random crane of some sort - he was a little snobby and too good for our bread - he opted for the native minnows for his morning meal instead.

Tater was fascinated by the minnows. They attacked the bread with as much ferocity as the ducks, but they took much smaller bites.

Finally, we moved on for the next leg of our journey - exploring across the river. We went across the same bridge I remember crossing the very first time we came to San Angelo before we moved here.

There we made some turtles very happy with our remaining bread, but that's a blog all it's own. Then it was on to the little path that leads to the Sunken Gardens. I told Tater there were two paths we could take; one was a nice sidewalk out in the open, and one was back through the woods and might be a little creepy. I couldn't contain my pride when my adventurous boy chose the creepy path. We played it up too - listening for scary noises, looking for strange bugs or other critters... when we finally got to the garden, T wasn't the least bit impressed with the flowers twice his height. He wanted to go back to the "forest," so off we went, stopping to throw rocks into the stream every now and then.

Well, by now we were pretty worn out, so we took a little snack break at the Visitors' Center. Daddy called while we were resting.

And on our way out, we just HAD to have a quick sheep ride.

And then we were ready for more playtime at Kids' Kingdom. Finally, Tater found some kids to play with and we stayed until almost noon when I practically had to drag my sweaty, sunscreen-plus-sand sticky boy away. He chose Burger King (or Kings, as he says it) for lunch, which, of course, involved more playing... indoor, air-conditioned playing this time. Finally we rounded out our date with snow cones. What ending could be better?



Poor tired, sweaty boy. Naturally, he fell asleep on the way home, and has been asleep for over two hours now. We had a blast, but the day isn't over. I'm sure the afternoon and evening will involve playing puppets, watching Bolt, and eating mac n' cheese, all the the current faves. I am just so blessed to be this little boy's mom.

30 by 30 update

I just realized I never posted the result of my big Day One endeavor - seeking the forgiveness of my "enemy." Well, it couldn't have turned out better.

I left the note I wrote her on her pile of stuff when we were on a break. Then I waited. I wasn't sure she had even read it until after lunch, we both happened to be the only ones in the hallway at the moment. She walked toward me with a smile on her face and gave me a hug. I'm talking a real, genuine, squeezy hug. She said she agreed with and was great with everything I had said in my letter, but that she was not up for a truce (what I'd asked for in the note). She said, "Not even a truce; it's just over." I couldn't do anything but grin this big, ridiculous smile. The rest of the week we laughed and joked like nothing had ever happened, which is exactly what I was hoping for. That right there made the entire 4-day (semi-boring) workshop worth it.

I was thinking of doing a weekly update with some of the fun stuff I was doing, but then it occurred to me that would be bragging, which pretty much defeats the purpose. I would still LOVE some suggestions though - I may run out of creativity once school hits. Anybody have some neat "random acts of kindness" ideas I can use??? Anybody know of a need I can fill? Anything I can do for you?